Customer-premises equipment (CPE) is an electronic device located at a customer's premises that itself connects to a network or enables other devices to connect to a network. CPE devices include mobile phones, telephones, routers, switches, residential gateways (RGs), set-top boxes (STBs), fixed mobile convergence devices, home networking adapters, Internet access gateways, and home Internet of Things (IoT) solutions that include centralized hub and connected smart peripherals (e.g. doorbell, security camera, sensor, home appliance, etc.). CPE devices couple to networks (e.g wide area networks (WANs), the Internet, etc. to thereby enable consumers to access services; CPE devices can distribute those services in a home via a local area network (LAN) or Wireless LAN (WLAN). Customers use CPE devices for various operations, including connecting to the Internet, communicating with a network or a device, placing or receiving phone calls, email, hosting Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls, and other telecommunications services.
Network providers have elected to use Technical Report 069 (“TR-069”) as a protocol to monitor and manage CPE devices. As a bidirectional Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)/Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)-based protocol, TR-069 provides communication between CPE devices and servers for management and modification of CPE devices. Network providers implement TR-069 in a wide range of telecommunications technology, including digital subscriber line (DSL), cable and Ethernet RGs, optical network terminals (ONTs), IP television STBs, network attached storage (NAS), powerline adapters, femtocells, microcells, picocells, and IP phones. The Broadband Forum manages the TR-069 standard and reports that the number of devices implementing TR-069 exceeds 350 million. More information regarding TR-069 is found at https://www.broadband-forum.org/standards-and-software/technical-specifications/tr-069-files-tools, which is incorporated by reference for its entirety.
Although TR-069 is widely implemented to manage CPE devices, the TR-069 standard and implementing equipment have several shortcomings that affect consumers, network providers, and service providers. For example, service or network providers that use the TR-069 standard require a call center to handle customer calls where TR-069 has identified a failing or problematic device. The network provider hosting the call center takes considerable time and value away from the provider and customer when CPE devices fail. Also, most subscribers find fixing a device that operates under TR-069 challenging, as a CPE device interface (e.g., an RG's interface) is complex. For example, a user generally cannot access a CPE device's configuration settings necessary to fix a TR-069 issue from the user interface.
Moreover, if subscriber access to a CPE device interface is permitted, there is a likelihood that the subscriber will improperly change configuration settings, resulting in CPE device failure, poor performance, or subscriber frustration. The eventual outcome is a call to customer support, which takes away valuable time and resources for all parties involved. Additionally, service providers and network providers waste millions of dollars per year on call centers and operations to fix devices operating on the TR-069 standard. Accordingly, the industry needs technology to address the above-mentioned problems and potentially provide additional benefits.
The drawings are not drawn to scale. Also, some components or operations can be separated into different blocks or combined into a single block for the purposes of discussion of some of the implementations of the disclosed technology. The disclosed technology is intended to cover modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the scope of the disclosed technology. For example, memory storing instructions can be located on a device or located in a remote location relative to the device. Also, a processor can execute instructions stored in a memory locally or read instructions from a remote memory.